


There lies a Knight slain under his shield,

by sentinelno11



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Diamond & Pearl & Platinum | Pokemon Diamond Pearl Platinum Versions
Genre: And Hope That I'm Not Blaspheming Or Something, Gen, In Which I Also Fuck With the Overall Movie Timeline to Better Suit My Own Desire for Manpain, In Which I Play Very Fast and Loose With Pokémon Universe Geography, In Which I Throw In Random Biblical Names, In Which Riley is Immortal, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24225364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentinelno11/pseuds/sentinelno11
Summary: His hounds they lie downe at his feete,So well they can their Master keepe.(Or, how to cope with the death of a glorious father some 3,000 years ago.)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	There lies a Knight slain under his shield,

**Author's Note:**

> listen i'm not saying i named riley's lucario sandalphon because i'm a gbf fan But
> 
> anyway bruh idk

It’s yet another day spent wondering if his skin will ever crack to match the earth when the planet is in its final years.

And when the great rock finally explodes, what will remain for him? Can the vacuum of space swallow souls, or will he be left to dangle blue-headed in the plushness of the dark sky, spending the rest of eternity choking on his own organs and struggling to breathe? Will Arceus and the heavenly guards be gentle upon him and rock his brain into a scrambled egg, and allow him to comatose indefinitely and blanket himself in the best memories of his life?

Will the rock explode at all?

Perhaps time has decided that Sir Riley, Voyager of the Drifting Sands, is better equipped to wander the barren wasteland with no need to sit, and to instead write the world’s history in epitaphs that no one will read.

Even after all this time, Riley can’t help but wonder if this was a possibility that his parents had even considered for him when he came into the world. When he screamed his first breath, did Sir Aaron and Lady Beatrice look upon him with something other than wonder and potential? Did the sickly mother ever blame him for her condition, knowing that perhaps she could have thrived without him? Did the bold father ever find him a hindrance in the line of duty? His thoughts spare a final “this is their divine punishment upon you” before he can possibly shrug off the negative feelings. 

The tombs in Rota are misplaced. What the tourist trap considers to be its “royal cemetery” Riley remembers as a portion of road leading to the guild hall. The cemetery claims to boast the bodies of his late father and the royalty going through the ages, and at this point, yes, he is inclined to agree that many a royal has been buried there. When he sees the people gawk he can’t even help but smile. There is something thrilling in death, and to know that something came before you. His heart marinates in dull (tired, near non-existent by virtue of having existed once, long ago) jealousy that he will never get to see that something comes after.

He enters Cameran Palace from a side door. He had installed it himself sometime in the fourteenth century to keep his comings-and-goings quiet.

Making his way to the old chapel at the northwest side of the castle ground is easy. The doors had closed to the public in 1943, the Kanto Health Department citing an overabundance of black mold growing on the mossy stonework and ancient tapestries. The 3,500-year-old latch at the bottom of the rotted door still holds firmly into the cracked ground below and protests with a scream as he pulls it open.

“Oh, sir! Sir, you aren’t allowed to go in there, the Health Department--”

Riley can’t say he expected company.

The hostess runs to him wearing a half-accurate uniform and slows down as she gets a closer look at him, coming to a full stop about fifty feet from him. 

Riley raises both eyebrows and looks at her sheepishly. “I apologize.”

“I… was mistaken, sir. Carry on.”

Riley’s eyebrows slant down in confusion now as he tilts his head at her. Her throat splutters to a start like a busted Rotom appliance.

“We were told about you, sir. By one of the senior footmen who retired two years ago. He told us to leave the ghost of Sir Aaron alone…”

Now that was a joke if Riley had ever heard one.

“I am sorry to have misled you, miss. You are indeed mistaken if you believe me to be even half the man that Sir Aaron was.”

“Ah, I mean, that would make sense… if you’re a ghost. You would not be even half the man anymore. Ah! Was that rude? I’m sorry. I never believed Rinta when he said you existed, but ohhhhhhhhhhhhI’mgoingtogobacktoworknowgoodbye!” The hostess flees even more quickly than she arrived, leaving Riley in a mild state of shock watching her go. The echo of Sir Aaron she had led to frighten even him.

After a long moment of standing in numbness, he pulls the wooden door open and steps inside the drafty tower. The insect-eaten tapestries featuring the coats of arms of the old houses still rest loyally against the walls, keeping watch over the furniture covered with white tarps. Much of the stained glass coloring Riley’s youth is cracked in pieces on the cool stone floor. He walks around to hear his sole-sounds bounce to the arched ceiling and back down. The tower is brightly lit through the broken windows, removing the foreboding of what once had doubled as the war room in tough times, where everyone would gather together in what they called “strategy” that was simply a desperate plea to Arceus for any kind of acknowledgment of human suffering.

With a dusty brushing sound Riley flings one white tarp onto the ground, unveiling a large chestnut table. _Rococo style. This can’t go here._ Of course, the table of his youth had broken under the weight of too many natural and manmade disasters to stand here anymore. There are no more solid relations anywhere he goes that connect him to the death that he was meant to die.

The table screams as he moves it with some difficulty, his back to the wood and metal as he pushes. He briefly considers bringing Sandalphon out to help him, but doesn’t want to weigh him down with the feel of his ancestors. The metal legs jitter across the ground while pushed, threatening to break off but holding fast as Riley shoves the table to the west-facing side of the tower. It takes very little time to move the rest of the furniture out of the way as well, the assortment of chairs with sunbeaten upholstery and splintering wood despite the tarps. He stands back for a moment to stare into the center of the room and then close his eyes, picturing the gold varnish of the old table, the darkness of the candlelight from sconces ringing in six around the diameter of the tower, standing mightily in the edge of rain beating down from outside, casting the colorful scenes from the windows onto the steady ground.

There is a time flower under the weather-beaten tapestry of House Titania. It curls in on itself as a crinkled blue and purple fallopian tube, holding the egg of an idea from eons past (no way to tell how far back just from a distant look). The size of the crystals ringing around the base suggest that it has been growing there undisturbed for some time. As Riley opens his eyes, he takes note of it and wonders how he had never seen it before. He approaches from a distance to keep it closed and presses his open hand to the ground cautiously, feeling a gentle pulse beat through the dirt to the roots of the time flower.

_August 6th, 1981,_ the soil sings. _I was transplanted from the base of the Tree of Beginning to this location by a scholar of medieval history._

How quaint.

“...let’s see what you have to say,” Riley says gently, lifting his hand off the ground and walking closer. He wonders if the memory will be warped now, a semblance of action and idea transplanted from the Tree to this place, all jumbled with places to try and keep straight.

_“Come two days time I will be ready for it. I just have to find the raiments before I can ask for Jirachi’s blessing.”_

Oh, but this was the worst possible memory that the time flower could have picked. In spite of the dread kicking up rocks in his stomach, Riley finds himself transfixed at the echo of a thought that he had long tried to forget every last detail of.

_The newly unified region of Kanto is marching northwards into Debash. The independent city-state and kingdom of Rota is the final guard standing staunchly between them. Rota’s famed Aura Guardians are dying._

_No, they are not dying. They are vaporizing._

_Riley has agreed to secure the legacy of his birthright in a fervent group prayer to Jirachi, offering to take the mantle of immortality to keep the trade alive forever, so that the world might never be without an Aura Guardian._

_He is just leaving._ Riley remembers this. In the time flower’s scene he sees the breeze carrying the last of his mantle out of the room.

_Sir Aaron had said nothing. He had stared coldly after Riley following what felt like years of discussion._

_Sir Zithri speaks up. “Now that that’s settled, let us discuss once again the proper formation for the Guardians defending the ridge--”_

_“No, let’s not discuss anything right now.” Sir Aaron looks to the floor with an oily expression and a bad taste in his mouth._

_“Sir Aaron. We have a limited amount of time to plan--”_

_“And you did not just forsake your only son to an eternity of loneliness,” Sir Aaron snaps back with the vicious tone of a leather belt. “We will take a moment to give him at_ **_least_ ** _our silence for his sacrifice.”_

_“This is not the time for sentimentality, Aaron,” protests Sir Eliezer in a low growl. “We have a war to plan for and the potential death of every last one of us.”_

_“Except him.”_

_“Yes, Aaron, that was the idea.”_

_“Sir Eliezer, are you cognizant of the consequences of doing this?”_

_“Are_ **_you_ ** _cognizant of the consequences of_ **_not_ ** _doing this?”_

_“You agreed to this,” Sir Zithri reminds Sir Aaron. “We unanimously agreed to this, Sir Riley included. He is more than capable of making his own decisions and has our best interest at heart, as we all do.”_

_“And yet not a one of you would offer yourselves up first, hm? It had to be him.”_

_“This is_ **_not_ ** _the time,” Lady Merab grunts, staring Aaron in the face with the same eyes._

_“Then when is the time?” Sir Aaron rises from his chair with a start. The surprise on the faces of all of the others pleads for all of the times that this has never happened. “When is the time to mourn my son? When I am dead? When is the time to understand that I am doing the right thing for us but the wrong thing for him? Do you expect me to sit back and brush off that I have condemned my boy to an eternity of horrors that none of us could ever imagine?”_

_“He is a man undying, Aaron.”_

_“I can only imagine that eternity will break a man in two and suck all of the soul and heart out of him. Though his body lives, he may as well be dead already.”_

_“He will see the world renewed.”_

_“...and for that, he will have to pay the price of infinite pain.”_

_Sir Aaron loses track of what is said for some time after that. When his mind reawakens he is alone in the room, gazing down upon a thumbed-through sacred text, index finger and teardrops indicating a single verse of old:_

> **W** hen he had heard that Tiqvah had been slain, he went up into his chambers over the gate and wept; my son, my son, O Tiqvah my son, would Arceus I had died for thee!

The rest of Riley’s memory fills his throat and chokes him like a bite of fatal apple. His Aura had known that Sir Aaron, Lady Beatrice, and all the others had been doomed to die. Likewise, he is sure that Sir Aaron had known, too, what would come to pass. Just as life pulses through the fertile soil death, too, has its way of making itself known through the slow-dying vines that linger.

Riley had never noticed until then that Sir Aaron’s ever-present companion, Felix (great-great-great-ad-infinitum-grandfather of Riley’s own Sandalphon), had not been present for the entirety of that discussion. He realizes now that perhaps Sir Aaron had wanted to take a moment to be selfish, and to mire himself in guilt and sorrow for his own family and self instead of bearing Atlas’ weight of the people of Rota. Riley thinks back to his mother, too, who had been a known psychic. Lady Beatrice had never been emotionally attached to her child or husband, who had both learned quickly to quit clamoring for her affection lest the heartache grow to be too much. The life behind her haunted eyes must have been that of the knowledge of an early death for Sir Aaron’s body and an early death for Riley’s soul.

Riley is too stunned to sob, or to rejoice, or to feel anything at all. His mind carries him beyond the scope of the time flower, which sucks its memory back into itself for the next viewer. Where his brain goes next reminds him of the all-encompassing awful nostalgia of the Cameran Palace simulacrum encountered on Iron Island in his fit of exasperation. As Riley pauses in his heel-clicking in the present the mind heads ste _adily back for the mountains and northwestern cliffs pointing to the sky, carved out there by the great gods for the people to go to if they were in need._

_Their boots slide sand and dust under a purpling magic hour. Riley has asked to go alone at the end, but was coerced into accepting company from Sir Aaron and a few of the others on the way there. They trudge onwards slowly to the planned camping site for the night in a small clearing surrounded by rock and the buds of cacti, carried in by the thieves’ clans from Ani’iihii further northwest still. Sir Aaron takes a seat on the packed sand as Riley approaches and the other two knights march off to the sides to ploy the land for food. Riley sits in silence next to his father for some time before he can feel the tendrils of Aura nibbling to get inside of his brain. He lets his father in and remains in a warm room of his mind while he waits for Aaron to speak his mind. Riley is surprised by the sound of an old madrigal, a mourning song that his mother had taught him early on that had come to infest his mind in the best and worst of times. He cannot help but join in, their harmonies echoing silently in their own minds:_

> **W** eep, o mine eyes,
> 
> and cease not.
> 
> Alas, these your springtides,
> 
> methinks increase not.
> 
> O when, o when begin you,
> 
> to swell so high that I may drown me in you.

(It had not occurred to Riley then that Sir Aaron had been begging some level of forgiveness for what was about to be. He had not stopped to think that his father was considering, painfully, his son’s pounding footfalls at age three, and his giddy laughing. He could not see Aaron standing just to the side to smile briefly at Riley’s won match in the courtyard, victorious by swordpoint and good sportsmanship. He could not feel the pain of an Aura Master retaining his sadness and keeping to himself the fears of abandoning his child to the wastelands. This lack of knowing has plagued Riley for three thousand years and will resurge with warmer blood for the next three thousand.)

Riley returns to the realm of the awakened and sees that the sun sits firmly still where it was before the time flower opened. It is May of 2020 and his life is epochs behind him. It is after this bitter realization once again that he heaves a litany of sobs for longer than he cares to imagine -- but he feels a change overcoming him. For once the sea of salty tears listens to the nature and medicine experts and begins to stitch his wounds shut to clear away the infection. The mossy shrines Riley has built to his parents in his mind begin to wash clean of their grime as he holds close the memory that the time flower has given him, of a father who could only be human and struggled, truly, as any man has.

When Riley leaves finally, at the magic hour, he pokes around in his mind for the feeling of Sir Aaron’s aura in the distant crystals at the Tree of Beginning. He finds a hint of it located in the center where the rocks still remember him.

Despite knowing that Sir Aaron’s body is freed to the heavens, as Riley did it himself (and nothing should remain, the legend should be allowed to rest at last, quietly, and the crystals remember only an echo of him so long after he released him) --

He begins to regale his father with the tales of what has happened between then and now.


End file.
